same kind, yet the differences between them are the greatest possible without transgressing the limits of kind. So Christianity promises union with God, and carefully guards that the creature shall not be absorbed into the Creator by its doctrine of distinction in the Godhead revealed in the Holy Trinity, and its insistence that man can be united to God only through the Incarnate Son, Himself both God and Man.

Further in an immanental or pantheistic conception of the universe there is no place for sin. What is called sin is a mere negation. It is the denial of what is, and having no real substance requires no atonement.

The transcendent God reveals His will to His creatures, and sin is active rebellion against that will. Thus sin is more than a negation. It is real, and requires a real remedy. Hence the Christian doctrine of atonement. Instead of seeking to immortalize his subjective self, the sinner who has heard the call of Christ goes empty-handed to the Cross, takes his stand on his creaturely nothingness, believes in the atoning Blood of Christ, and passes a forgiven man-with Christ into the resurrection life. Henceforth he lives, and he can say with St. Paul: "I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me."

Nor is that all. The mystic hopes to attain after much arduous discipline to the fifth or nirvanic plane. Apocalyptic Judaism also had its doctrine of seven heavens to which the elect might climb. When St. Paul was writing to the Ephesians and Colossians, there were a large number of Gnostic teachers prescribing the way of initiation on to the different planes or heavens. St. Paul did not contradict them. Contradiction is unmannerly. He told them of something far better. "For," said he, "Christ who descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens"; and Christians who are seated with Christ begin their life in Christ where the initiate never hopes to attain.

This brings us to the Christian Saint.

A Christian Saint is always a partial revelation of God. He becomes like Christ, not by a process of imitation but by an inward transformation. He loves and therefore he knows; but his love is not a mild benevolence, it is a fire that leaps to righteousness and hates iniquity. He distinguishes between good and evil, and makes no compromise with the truth. He has learnt to know himself and his needs by going out of himself to look at Christ. He observes distinctions and likenesses,

comparing spiritual things with spiritual. His life is a romance. For in giving himself to Christ he gives himself to another, and Christ beckons him beyond servanthood, beyond sonship, to marriage union. As he responds to the Bridegroom, he learns in the secret places where he meets Christ that no good thing is withheld from him. God takes his delights with the sons of men, and His bounties are restrained by nothing but unbelief. The Saint forgets himself in Christ. Constrained by the love of Christ he goes forth to adventure in the world. He is a knight and carries a sword. The battle is hard, but he scorns to complain, for with Christ within him and his armour on, with his sword in his hand and God above, he perceives the wrong at hand that he must put right, and he pursues his adventurous way singing unto victory.

The Christian mystic Saint fulfils the dreams of his preChristian mystic ancestors, but he himself is awake, and his deeds partake of the noonday glory.

DISCUSSION.

Lt.-Col. BIDDULPH said: I was struck with the speaker's remark that whereas the Theosophist only expects to reach " the fifth plane as his ultimate goal, after strenuous effort, yet the Christian who is joined to Christ by living faith starts far above this level. In these days when the tendency is to exalt any spurious religion above Christianity, it is well to let the outsider see what the claims of Christianity are when placed alongside other religious cults.

Mr. W. E. LESLIE said: Perhaps the mystic experience can most fruitfully be studied by the comparative method: comparison of psychological types, philosophic, religious, æsthetic; and cultural types, classical, western, oriental and savage. Many of the methods by which the state is induced, point strongly to a modification of "threshold" by auto-suggestion. From the Christian standpoint this is of great importance, for the Scriptures record numerous instances of contact between human personalities and spiritual entities external to them, both good and evil, which appear to have been accompanied by psychic phenomena. This is a profound subject demanding careful research-particularly in view of speculations such as those of F. W. H. Myers.

Mr. THEODORE ROBERTS congratulated the lecturer with having made clear the difference between Christian mysticism and that which was non-Christian. He thought the Apostle Paul was one of the best examples of the true mystic, but pointed out that the vision which led to his conversion was wholly objective, and thus unlike those of mystics which the lecturer had referred to. The Apostle was on a journey and therefore not likely to be fasting, and the vision had nothing in it of the Jewish elements already in his mind, but was so contrary to his previous experience as to change his whole outlook and turn him from a persecutor into one of the persecuted. It was in his after life that we found mysticism, such as his writing that Christ was his life, and he (Mr. Roberts) suggested that his account of his being caught up into the third heaven was true Christian mysticism. There was no egotism in it, as he appears to have kept it to himself for some 14 years; and when he came to mention it, he did not attempt to describe the indescribable, but, on the contrary, stated that the words he heard were unutterable.

Mr. Roberts considered that we needed to lay emphasis on mysticism as a true part of our lives, particularly having regard to the matter-of-fact character of our Western minds, and in days when work was made everything of. He considered that the transcendence of God is of the greatest importance, and would like to hear something from the Lecturer on the way in which the fact of His invisibility was resolved in two passages in the Apostle John's writings. In the Gospel (i. 18) we find, "No man hath seen God at any time; the only Begotten Son-(or as he believed the true reading was-God only begotten)—who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." In the Epistle we have the same difficulty resolved in this way: If we love one another, God abideth in us, and His love is perfected in us" (iv. 12).

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As the Lecturer had pointed out, there could be no full intercourse with God apart from His self-revelation in the person of the Son; but this produced a response and resulted in mutual appreciation such as we get in the figure of the Shepherd and the sheep, so that God being a Spirit, His true worshippers must worship Him in spirit and in truth.

Lt. Col. G. MACKINLAY said: Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemenAs far as I can understand the paper now before us, it seems to me

that the non-Christian mystic is a very sad being. From our Lecturer's description he is a self-centred individual, given to abstraction, abstaining from animal food, and undergoing fasts, the result being insanity in many cases. Some he tells us think themselves to be persons of notoriety—a very common symptom of an unsound mind. Others are obsessed with one idea, another form of mental aberration; others again when fasting come under the influence of visions; in fact, the whole system presents a very unwholesome appearance. When I arrived in India rather more than fifty years ago, I thought to myself, one good feature arising from the aloofness of Englishmen and natives is, that the European has an aversion to adopting native habits, so I felt pretty sure that the Hindoo religion together with the nirvana of devotees would not be adopted by the more manly Englishman; that conclusion held good for many years, but of late, East and West have altered considerably in their attitude towards each other, and the old aversion of Westerns to Oriental philosophy and religion is not as strong as formerly.

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With regard to Christian mysticism, I have not learnt much from our Lecturer, except that he states it differs materially from nonChristian mysticism. I fear, however, there is still much resemblance between the two, and that there is much of subtle danger in both of them. The list he gives us of prominent Christian people who were mystics in recent times, does not make me alter my opinion: for, good as they were, who should say that these men would not have been better still if they had not been mystics?

The Lecturer finished his paper splendidly. His dark beginning with his vivid description of the sad lives of non-Christian mystics found an admirable contrast in the solid blessings vouchsafed to us who enjoy the blessed salvation given to us as believers in the atoning merits of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Mr. SIDNEY COLLETT expressed his cordial agreement with the Lecturer.

AUTHOR'S REPLY.

The Rev. CHARLES GARDNER, in reply, said: The great difference between the non-Christian and Christian mystic is, that the nonChristian builds his system on the immanence of God, and he believes

in transcendence only in the sense that the whole transcends the part. The Christian admits the truth of immanence, and insists that God is also transcendent; and because transcendent He can be known only by Revelation which He made in part by the prophets, fully by His Son.

Mr. Gardner did not wholly agree with Col. Mackinlay's depreciatory remarks on mysticism. The Gospel according to St. John is a supreme mystical document. The Spirit of Christ rejects nothing that He can use. Christianity took the mysticism that it already found, purified it, and transmuted it to its own purpose. The pure mystical spirit when present in a Christian is as enriching as a feeling for poetry, music or art; and it is in fact an added

sense.